[Foundation-l] How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia

[Milos Rancic]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 21:38, Mateus Nobre <mateus.nobre at live.co.uk> wrote:
> It's complex, Milos.
>
> We are not activists. Being a volunteer in Wikimedia do not torn ourselves activists.
>
> It could be, but the option to be a volunteer in Wikipedia is just a option to share the free knowledge, not about political issues.
>
> I totally agree to fight against censorships in Internet and in real life, I agree with that. And I fight against that. We can, as people and citizens; But Wikimedia Foundation can't, cause we can't force the volunteers to agree that visions.

I know that it's complex, of course. And I know that it was necessary
to see that our bunker is on the front line to realize that it's
better to help others before.

> We're not a political party (yet?)

At some point of time we'll have to articulate ourselves politically.
There is relatively clear set of values behind our movement and there
are clear benefits which all humans are getting thanks to our work.
Pretending that we are apolitical makes our position worse and
inevitably leads to the crisis, like this one is.

Leadership inside of one network, no matter how loose the connections
are inside of that network, has responsibility to raise and articulate
relevant political issues, as well. And I am glad to see that Jimmy
has taken at least the articulation role in this case.